He completed his great work, the Sidd'hanta-sírómańi, as he himself informs us in a passage of it,[1] in the year 1072 Saca. This information receives cor- roboration, if any be wanted, from the date of another of his works, the Caj-ana-cutuhala, a practical astronomical treatise, the epoch of which is 1105 Saca;[2] 33 years subsequent to the completion of the systematic treatise. The date of the Sidd' hánta-śirómańi, of which the Vija-ganita and Lilávati are parts, is fixt then with the utmost exactness, on the most satis- factory grounds, at the middle of the twelfth century of the Christian era, A.D. 1150.[3]
The genuineness of the text is established with no less certainty by nume- rous commentaries in Sanscrit, besides a Persian version of it. Those com- mentaries comprise a perpetual gloss, in which every passage of the original is noticed and interpreted : and every word of it is repeated and explained. A comparison of them authenticates the text where they agree ; and would serve, where they did not, to detect any alterations of it that might have taken place, or variations, if any had crept in, subsequent to the composition of the earliest of them. A careful collation of several commentaries,[4] and of three copies of the original work, has bppn made , and it will be seen in the notes to the translation how unimportant are the discrepancies. From comparison and collation, it appears then, that the work of Bháscara, exhibiting the same uniform text, which the modem transcripts of it do, was in the hands of both Mahommedans and Hindus between two and three centuries ago : and, numerous copies of it having been diffused through- out India, at an earlier period, as of a performance held in high estimation, it was the subject of study and habitual reference in countries and places so remote from each other as the north and west of India and the southern peninsula : or, to speak with the utmost precision, Jambusara in the west, Agra in North Hindustan, and Párthapúra, Gólagràma, Amarávati, and Nandigráma, in the south.
- ↑ Góládháya ; or lecture on the sphere, c. 11. § 56, As. Res. vol. 12. p. 314.
- ↑ As. Res. ibid.
- ↑ Though the matter be introductory, the preliminary treatises on arithmetic and algebra may have been added subsequently, as is hinted by one of the commentators of the astronomical part. (Vártic.) The order there intimated places them after the computation of planets, but before the treatise on spherics; which contains the date.
- ↑ Note A. 1
